“It’s just a matter of whoever gets out front, to be honest with you,” Busch said. “I hate to say that. These cars so far have shown it’s a little bit harder to pass the leader, especially if you’re the guy (leading) that’s on the top side.”

Busch won a race that ran caution-free. Jeff Gordon, the class of the field early in the race but then stymied by a pit-road speeding penalty, felt that if there were more cars instead of six in the lead draft, the outcome could have been more dicey.

“You’re going to have somebody go with you, you’re not going to be able to do it by yourself, but you can get a run, definitely, no doubt about it,” Gordon said.

“I know Kasey (Kahne) was sitting back there behind me just waiting for the right moment and opportunity late in this race.”

Gordon said that in the closing laps of a fuel run, more things will happen as more handling comes into play.

“This is a real thinking race now,” Gordon said. “It comes down the way it used to. You get yourself in position.

“Everybody rides and thinks about what they have. You’ve got to have your car handling pretty good, which is tough to do further back in traffic.”

Robin Pemberton, NASCAR vice president of competition, said he liked what he saw, which many drivers compared to the type of racing that took place 10 to 15 years ago at the track.

“It looked like you have to be calculated, it looks like you have to work on it, it looks like you have to learn the draft,” Pemberton said. “It looks like you have to be careful and get very organized if you lose the draft. … You’re still only at half the cars (in the Thursday races).”

Pemberton said he did not anticipate any rules changes, and Clint Bowyer, who couldn’t make a move late in the second race, agreed that no changes were necessary.

“We still haven’t had the big, big pack,” Bowyer said. “I learned a little bit, but without help, I couldn’t complete passes.

“I think when we get in the big pack, you’re going to have that help behind you and you’re going to be able to make some more moves and get bigger runs on people. That’s when the excitement will go up.”

Bowyer said the current nature of the racing is such that if a driver makes the move, he will need help or will get shuffled to the pack. He noted that because of a lack of cautions, some drivers who were slow on pit stops never got back up into the lead draft, creating a difficult situation for those behind Busch in the final laps.

“We didn’t have enough cars,” Bowyer said. “There were only six cars out there. There was two of us trying to make a run on another two and it just wasn’t the right situation.”

Harvick said he could see a difference between the races Thursday and the preseason Sprint Unlimited that he won last Saturday night.

“The good thing about today compared to the other night is that (on the) bottom, once you get four or five cars, it can seem to make (up) some ground on the cars on the top, even if they're lined up,” Harvick said.

“As that pack gets bigger, I think that's going to get even better.”

It’s going to need to be if they hope to make the pass.

“They really stall easy,” Biffle said about the cars. “They won't suck up to the guy in front of you.”

The guy who won the Daytona 500 last year was in position to possibly make a move late in the second race. Instead, Matt Kenseth got hung out to dry as his teammate Busch went to block the rest of the field and Kenseth went to the back of the lead pack.

“It’s going to be tough, a lot like it was today,” Kenseth said. “It just depends on where everybody is. … Everybody is trying, everybody wants to win, it’s just when the cars get in a certain situation, it makes it kind of difficult to make some moves.”